I am a total sucker for a colored sporthorse. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my plain bay Thoroughbred, but if it’s flashy… I adore it. Bonus points for spots. Triple bonus points for palomino. One day… one day I will have a palomino hunter, and it will be beautiful. Anyway, WEF is a sea of bays. Even a chestnut or a gray stands out among the grays, but I did find some color few and far in-between. I’m sure there’s a…
Maybe this is the case at all the big horse shows… it probably is. Remember, I show locally and my A/AA experience is just as a bystander at mostly regional A shows. Before I visited WEF, the biggest show I’d ever watched was the Duke Children’s Classic in my hometown of Raleigh, NC. At Duke there were lots of amazing horses, but I don’t remember scrim sheets. WEF has tons of amazing fashion and beautiful horses, but I swear the…
For each week during the Winter Equestrian Festival, there is a “Saturday Night Light” class that is open to the public and hosts a big show jumping (usually) or occasional hunter class. These vary in difficulty and prize money, and every year I’ve previously visited I’ve been lucky enough to go for the $500k WEF Finale Grand Prix… which is massive and filled with the best of the best. This year I went during week 10 instead of 12, and…
You see it in ads all the time. “Horse is a 10+ jumper” “This one is your hack winner!” “His trot is totally a 10”. Those kinds of descriptions usually describe pretty nice horses. One of my favorite things about going to WEF and watching the hunter ring, is that you don’t really hear those phrases.. you see them. You see them everywhere, because I’ve never been to a place with more nice horses in one ring. Say you’re chillin’ at…
Happy Fat Tuesday! Though I’m not from New Orleans or “Mardi Gras” country, I really do love the holiday. For many years, my mother in law lived in uptown New Orleans and we would visit for Mardi Gras every year. It quickly became even more exciting than Christmas! She would make amazing King Cakes, and we would pretty much exist on sugar and alcohol for about a week. There was a parade almost every day, and they were within walking distance from…
Even though I decided to cancel my plans to show in March, I’m a horse show addict and I usually can’t stay away. I headed out early to watch our hunters go, planning to ride Simon during lunch before the jumpers and then come back to the horse show to watch and photograph the jumpers in the afternoon. Of course, we know how horse show schedules go and I ended up staying all day and getting properly sunburnt. The morning…
Hunter derbies make my little heart go pitter patter. I love to watch them, read about them, take pictures of them and hopefully soon… ride in one. Large or small I don’t care, I am pro derby! Even though I adore them, I know enough about derbies to be dangerous. Not totally clueless, but it’s not like I’ve campaigned in the derby ring for a season. In lieu of an “informative” post from someone who’s definitely not an expert, I…
It’s been a while since we’ve revisited the equine photography tips series, but a Facebook fan and friend mentioned that I kind of dropped it off… whoops! She asked specifically about timing over jumps (amongst others I will cover soon!), so we’ll cover that today. If you want to play catch up, you can read the timing under saddle post or browse my entire equine photography archive. Timing over fences photos is both the easiest and the stupidest hardest thing…
I was planning to have an awesome lesson write-up post for you with tons of new and improved jumping pictures. But I have jack. Why? Because I hate the weather. I know that immediately I will get a bunch of comments about how much worse your weather is than mine, but at the moment I don’t care. I lost a lot of days riding this week due to rain, and when it was beautiful low 70’s and sunny on Saturday, all the…
One of my personal goals this year was to take more photos with my ‘real’ camera instead of my iphone… and even though that’s a personal goal I am 100% okay with those photos being horsey! I’ve lugged ‘ol trusty to the barn the past few weekends, and spend a little bit wandering around like a crazy person with a massive lens in tow. Crazy person or not, I really enjoy taking more photos again and am pleased with some of…
I’m kind of a sucker for photo challenges, and since one of my personal goals this year is to take more pictures… I’m all for Eventing in Color‘s 14 Photo Challenge. The only rule was that they must be photos taken in 2014… well I took all of these this past weekend at the barn, so I think that counts!
So, you want to get professional photos taken with your horse huh? Do it. Do it yesterday. I regret nothing. That being said, I do have some advice that might help you… or not. Who knows. I’m going to tell you anyway so I can share more pretty photos. Do your homework Find a good photographer. Cheap isn’t usually best, but there are some exceptions. I chose Anneke Paterson because I was lucky enough to know her personally and watch…